Why Putinism will survive Putin

As the Ukraine crisis settles into what appears to be a long stalemate, perhaps it is time to consider the future of Russian recalcitrance to the West — and who and what may follow in the footsteps of the main author of this recalcitrance, Vladimir Putin. Russia plainly needed someone like Putin at this point in its history. But did it also need Putinism? Will it in the future? Will the autocratic, state-centered ideology that Russian’s leader has come to represent survive the man?

I believe there is a good chance that it will. Coming out of the failure of the Soviet Union, Russia needed a new feeling of mission, a new Russian idea. This is what Putin delivered. Though there is no elaborate Putinist ideology, a document prepared by a think tank established by the Russian politician German Gref in 1999, just prior to Gref’s appointment as minister for economic development, and approved by Putin, constituted a platform for Putin’s election campaigns. The document said that Russia was passing through the greatest crisis in its history and that all its resources, political, economic, and moral, would have to be enlisted so that a united country will be able to overcome it. The country needed solidarity and above all gosudarstvenost, or strong state power.

This need is not going away. Contrary to the beliefs of those who subscribe to the idea of an “End of History” in which liberal democracy becomes the common form of government throughout the world, Russians feel the need for strong state power more than many other countries. At the core of the Russian character is a belief that, without discipline, people would not work and nothing would function, and only government authority can enforce this discipline. Given the basic anarchic inclination of the people, but for a strong state power, the country would fall apart. Beyond that Russians tend to believe that Russia can exist only as a great power to fulfill its historic, God-given mission, and a democratic Russia would not be strong enough to attain great power status. This is at the root of the weakness of every democratic movement in Russia throughout history.

The most important component in Putinist ideology is nationalism accompanied by anti-Westernism. The origins of this intense anti-Westernism are not entirely clear; anti-Americanism did not exist before the Cold War to any significant degree. But from an eminently practical perspective, it has to do with the need of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, to justify its existence, budget, and policy. And Putin is a man whose mindset comes out of the KGB. For unless Russia is protected against its dangerous, powerful, and devious enemies, the country will be destroyed again. Hence the need to maintain this enormous and costly security apparatus headed by the new nobility of the country.

True, there is every reason to think that the personality cult of Putin will not survive. It is not really a permanent feature in Russian history — after all, no czarist minister ever became the object of such adulation. A vodka was named Putin, as were a milkshake, a lollypop, ice cream, a brand of kebab, and a frost- resistant tomato. Perhaps he had asked for it with his bare- chested adventures in Siberia and Tuva. Perhaps it happened because he was looking so much younger and moving faster than Brezhnev and his immediate successors. In the city of Yaroslavl not far from Moscow, a group of women had to be detained in a psychiatric clinic because of their uncontrollable passion for the man in white overalls (so as to resemble a bird) flying in a hang glider with the cranes in Siberia. It would not have happened to Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev.

But Putinism is likely to survive because it has not been a disaster, andthere is at present no alternative.

Nor has Putinism, at least as defined as state capitalism, been a very successful enterprise. It means autocracy, but this is nothing new in Russian history, and whatever benefits that may bring are almost mitigated by inefficiency and corruption. There is a parliament, but the opposition parties are not really in opposition. There is a free press, but the freedom is limited to small newspapers and the criticism must not go too far. There is a constitution, but it is not the best guide for the realities of contemporary Russia. (There was a Stalinist constitution in 1935, allegedly the most democratic in the world, but it had nothing to do with the practice of Stalinism.) It became a matter of sad irony and many jokes. Historians know that each system especially each extreme political system, is different and often unique. The quest for a Russian new political doctrine is particularly unique because there were few transitions from Communism and each was different, be it in China, Vietnam, or Eastern Europe.

But Putinism is likely to survive because it has not been a disaster, andthere is at present no alternative. The only opposition comes from forces even more anti-democratic and further to the right than Putin. Russians perceive their country as a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies who want to inflict great harm on her. This fear is shared by a majority of the public and is reinforced by government propaganda, above all on controlled television. The chaos that prevailed in Russia during the 1990s proves he need for a set of beliefs like Putinism. It may go in future under another name but in essence it will be on the same lines.

Many close observers of the Russian scene believe there is no great demand for a new ideology and very little interest in the subject. If people quarrel, it is about finances — about their income, their investments and profits, and how best to improve their interests — not about ideological questions or dialectical materialism.

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When Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Russia was in dire trouble. Neither the state nor the economy was functioning. A great deal of personal ambition and/or patriotism was needed to aspire to the leadership of the country in these circumstances. Not being an economist, Putin was probably not fully aware of the gravity of the situation, but he must have known much in view of his senior positions in the years before. For his prime minister, he appointed Mikhail Kasyanov, who later became a sharp critic of his regime. Kasyanov carried out important and successful reforms in the economic field (taxation, fiscal reforms, customs). Inflation was reduced and the economy grew during his term of office by about one- third.

Mikhail Kasyanov. ALEXANDER UTKIN/AFP/Getty.

However, he disagreed with Putin’s style of governing, arguing that separation of powers had been abolished and replaced by the “vertical power” principle, which meant that all important decisions were taken by the government; neither parliament nor the judiciary had a say any longer. There were allegations of fraud against Kasyanov, but the same was true with regard to Putin; it is difficult to think of a single Russian politician of that period or in the years after who did not come under suspicion. Kasyanov joined the opposition after his resignation in 2004, but he did not enjoy much popularity, and his political career came to an end.

Kasyanov was succeeded by Mikhail Fradkov as prime minister; this cabinet included two well- known liberal economists, German Gref and Alexei Kudrin. They pursued a sensible policy but did not last long. The beginning of Putin’s presidency was not auspicious. Three months after his appointment, in August 2000, the Kursk submarine disaster occurred. Kursk was a nuclear- powered cruise missile submarine, and it went down in the Barents Sea. Putin was on holiday at the time but did not immediately return to Moscow or visit the scene, nor did he accept offers of help by foreign countries. But he emerged unscathed from this affair, just as another disaster did not harm him: the 2002 terrorist attack, when 130 people were killed in the ineffectual attempt by Russian Special Forces to release hostages in a Moscow theater. This was an attack by Chechens in the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. It occurred during the per for mance of a musical based on Veniamin Kaverin’s The Two Captains. The Special Forces pumped a poisonous agent into the theater’s ventilation system, which caused the deaths of many. Nevertheless, Putin’s popularity did not suffer. Perhaps it was realized that it would be unjust to attribute the blame to him personally. Perhaps it was the feeling that Rus sia needed a strong hand, a leader, that the authority of the state had to be reestablished, that the country should follow a more assertive, nationalist foreign policy—and that under Putin it would get what was needed.

Above all, it was Putin’s good fortune that the price of oil and gas was rising; without this, none of his policies could have been carried out. The price of a barrel of oil in Yeltsin’s days (1994) had been about $16. In 2002, it was $22; in 2004, $50; and in 2008, $91. It has remained at this level for fi ve years. From 2001 to 2007, the economy grew on average 7 percent a year. By 2006, the Rus sian GNP was double what it had been at the end of the Yeltsin period. Rus sia could repay all its debts, a new middle class came into being, pensions were doubled—in brief, almost everyone benefited from this prosperity, which was attributed not to good fortune, but to the wise and effi cient leadership of Putin. It was one of the most striking cases of good luck in modern history.

Putin’s outlook on the economy had been formed in all likelihood by his years in Germany — the West German example, to be sure. He was in favor of a market policy within limits, insisted on a great mea sure of state control and supervision, and firmly resisted any attempt by the oligarchs to wield political power. Those disobeying the new rules, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Boris Berezovsky, found themselves in a gulag or in exile. Furthermore, a new group of superrich was emerging, such as Genadi Tymshenko, who were personally known to him and on whose loyalty he could implicitly count.

The new rulers of Russia were not the oligarchs but former colleagues of Putin from St. Petersburg and from his KGB days. They also included some senior military and police officials, some specialists, even a few “liberals” (in the early days), and all people who could be trusted. The leadership style was strictly authoritarian. Perhaps a quarter or a third had a KGB background. Their part in the government may even have been higher, since their backgrounds were usually not widely publicized.

Putin's approval rating has been consistently high, at times skyrocketing to 80 percent and even higher.

Putin was now the president, yet little was known about his opinions. Was he at heart a reformer, sympathizing with the liberals, or a conservative? Did he want to change the country, or did he see as his main priority calming the country and bringing tranquillity after many years of unrest? It would have been unrealistic to expect from a KGB graduate the democratization of Rus sian society. But would he accept the changes that had taken place under Gorbachev, or would he reintroduce a strict authoritarian regime moving more and more toward the right, based on a conservative reactionary worldview? Would the emphasis of the new regime be on domestic or foreign policy? These and other basic questions were left open for a considerable time. There were contradictory indications, but by about 2005 the impression gained ground that the conservative and nationalist impulse was strongest. Those working closely with him and willing to share their impressions thought of him as a patriot, very cautious, playing his cards close to his chest, not given to trusting people except perhaps a very few with a background similar to his own. He has apparently never believed in socialism, let alone communism. He certainly seemed not to think that Russia was ready to move fast (if at all) on the road toward democracy.

Much has been written about “the faceless Putin,” his masculinity, his activity in the field of judo and other sports. He has appeared on comic strips and in thrillers, and he has been shown kissing a sleeping tigress and a sturgeon and also as the father of the nation and confronting a major economic crisis. His approval rating has been consistently high, at times skyrocketing to 80 percent and even higher. The state-controlled media played a decisive role in this rise in his popularity. One could think of some other twentieth- century leaders who reached similarly high approval and even enthusiasm and became the object of a cult. But it is also true that Putin admirably fit the role of a leader as wanted by many Russians at the time. Democratic institutions were not in demand, but the country wanted a leader exuding strength and self- confidence.

Most Russians have come to believe that democracy is what happened in their country between 1990 and 2000, and they do not want any more of it. There never was democracy in Rus sia except perhaps for a few months in 1917, hence the deep- seated distrust and aversion, the belief that democracy is the state of affairs in which a few people get very rich and the rest remain poor or get even poorer.

Whoever succeeds Putin is not likely to be much of a democrat either. Obviously the successor will have to belong to the new “nobility.” He will have to be capable but not too much so in order to avoid outshining his predecessor. He will have to be considered loyal to the leader who appointed him and trusted to pursue his policy. Under Putin, the state has regained its traditional function, recovered its effectiveness over its own resources, and become the largest corporation responsible for establishing the rules of the game. It may be an autocratic regime, but it needs the assent of its citizens. For now, it has that in spades.

Walter Laqueur is a historian and the author of Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West, from which this article is adapted.